


Preservation

by extryn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Bondage, Dog Jokes, Food Porn, Hand Feeding, Hurt No Comfort, Licking, M/M, Not That It Helps, PWP without Porn, The Valiant (Doctor Who), The Year That Never Was (Doctor Who), the Master is in a good mood for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 17:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20362279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extryn/pseuds/extryn
Summary: The confit salmon is still warm, and the deepest orange-red as the Master pinches off a generous bite and offers it in his fingers. Shining and tender, the Doctor can only hesitate for a second before he closes his mouth around it.





	Preservation

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, God, I seem to write a lot of this now. There's no premise. It really is just the Master hand-feeding the Doctor* because it is pretty, and it pleases me.
> 
> * This fic is about eating things. If you have any triggers, squicks, or nopes about any part of that process, please check out the notes at the end for a more comprehensive set of warnings, because there are a few twists** I've not tagged for. 
> 
> ** Calling them "twists" would be a bit too generous. More like occasional detours into my own self-indulgence.

‘Aren’t you hungry, Doctor?’ the Master muses, and delicately carves off another bite of fish with the belly of his fork.

He is. But there’s very little he can do about it, on his knees, wrists and elbows tightly bound behind him.

Little wisps of steam tangle and dance off the end of the Master's silverware, coiling into the air. The smell is rich and sweet, all long chain fatty acids and carotenoids and organomercury.

‘No? Nothing to say?’

The Doctor finds himself lingering on the sight of the Master’s lips and tongue chasing crumbs of cracked pepper and dried wakame before pulling the soft meat into his mouth. He looks away, and instead finds himself eye-level with splayed legs and crotch.

‘You _are_ hungry,’ the Master observes.

The Doctor’s lips tighten, and he drops his gaze to his own lap, instead.

Abandoning his plate for a moment, the Master sits back, and considers him. ‘I went to a lot of trouble for this.’ Then the moment breaks, and he huffs, and spears some shaved fennel with a sharp screech of metal on too-clean porcelain.

The floor is immaculate. The Doctor had watched it cleaned and waxed and polished for hours; over and over until the Master was satisfied. Bereft of words, of touch, the Doctor finds himself perseverating over every action, dissecting each choice, trying to find some meaning in the madness. Now it is night, illuminated by nothing but the dull red glow through the windows and the eerie fluorescence of ionised nitrogen. And a pair of tapered candles.

‘I thought you’d be grateful. You don't seem to enjoy the Pedigree much.’

With renewed ire, the Doctor glares at the floor. His stomach chooses that precise moment to betray him and grumble across the deck, down the stairs below. The Master splutters with laughter and pinches up his cheek. Alarmingly gentle, but the Doctor won’t give him a reaction. He won’t. He lets the Master wiggle his face about in silence.

The Master snaps at one of the omnipresent suits, the soldiers, doesn’t seem to care which. ‘Fetch our guest his dinner.’

And at this, the Doctor’s eyes fall, his jaw infinitesimally clenches before he realises what he’s done. The Master notices – always notices. As desperate for meaning as he is. His hand, already returning to his knife and fork, pauses thoughtfully. The Doctor tenses as it comes down to wind itself through his hair, teasing, threatening. But the hurt never comes, and instead the grip becomes a ruffle, becomes a stroke. It’s maddening. His body cries out for more than touch, but the Doctor clamps down as hard as he can on his mind. Has to.

‘I’m not trying to trick you, Doctor,’ the Master finally offers, in the quiet, fingertips massaging his scalp in five slow, purposeful lines. ‘It’s only two words.’

For the fiftieth time, the Doctor’s fingers claw their way up to try reach the fastenings of his bonds. It is, of course, useless with his elbows wedged together. It’s just another feather on the balance, another nudge towards the moment when all the iron in the world can’t stop the scales from tipping.

‘They begged me not to, you know. To let them die there,’ the Master begins. He keeps eating as he does, as if this is the sort of conversation one has on a sofa over a tray of chips. ‘Couldn’t face the idea of being the last of their race.’ He pauses, swallows. ‘I couldn’t trust them with chef’s knives, but humans do a remarkable job at triumphing over adversity. My best men, with all the resources and money in the world, and it took them thirty-six hours to find a salmon, let alone catch it.’

The Doctor says nothing, but his stomach is sinking. He _is_ very hungry.

‘I gave them twenty-four, and now the fires have almost burnt out. I should kill them for that,’ he comments, and shovels another mouthful in. Exaggerated, he closes his eyes in bliss, and swallows.

Someone arrives, with a half-filled ceramic bowl and a carefully professional expression. The Master tugs the Doctor’s head back to centre. He looks at his half-finished meal with disappointment. ‘What a waste.’

The Doctor lets out a breath that sounds more like a shudder. The Master’s fingers wander down his temple, to the curve of his cheek, and curl around his jaw. Further still, and a warm palm cups the back of his neck in both a carnal grope and animal comfort.

The Master’s thumb hooks into the corner of the Doctor’s mouth, and he startles, and _that_ is when the scale drops. Because his mouth goes slack, and the pad of the Master’s thumb glides along the inside of his cheek and presses taste onto the flat his tongue, and it is so good it is almost painful. He can taste the Master, too, the sweet and the salt and the smoky ozone, and the hint of oil and fat is like a live wire to his brain. Saliva comes running into his mouth, thin and urgent, and drips down the Master’s hand, a line of need between their touch and the floor where the Doctor’s hazy reflection looks back at him. Broken, lost.

He moans, just a little, just enough. And then he says it around the base of the Master’s thumb; half of it, anyway. ‘Please.’

The Master smiles. The sight makes the Doctor’s hearts lurch, the earnest joy in it. He takes his hand away, and the string of spit sticks to the Doctor’s chin. He waves away his servant.

The confit salmon is still warm, and the deepest orange-red as the Master pinches off a generous bite and offers it in his fingers. Shining and tender, the Doctor can only hesitate for a second before he closes his mouth around it—and almost sobs, because it is so impossibly good, and it has been _so _long. It melts on his tongue; there isn’t even time to chew it before it melts down his throat. And then it’s over.

The Master is generous, and offers him another, and another. Too soon, it’s all gone, and the Doctor finds himself sucking the Master’s fingers clean, as if he can salvage every last molecule. He is breathing fast, his body on high alert, urging him for more, to fight for it if necessary. But there isn’t any.

The Master must know this. Must see it in the Doctor’s eyes, smell it in the cortisol and ketones evaporating through his skin. He indicates the floor with the point of his shoe, where a morsel of pink flesh sits, cooling on the parquetry.

He wrestles with himself, just a moment. But there is little point to it; refusing to concede this last image of defeat. He has already lost - he lost the moment the Master confirmed Martha’s last known coordinates, the moment he ordered the missiles to be primed and fired – and the Doctor hadn’t thought of a single word, a single action that had stopped him.

He lowers himself laboriously, the pain catching at his shoulders, and surrenders himself to that last moment of comfort, of kindness. He tastes nothing but wax and solvent.

Only bare minutes later, the Master holds him as his stomach, deconditioned, rejects all of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Things you may want to know are included in this fic: dog food, the suggestion that the dog food gets eaten, vomiting, starvation.


End file.
